A black college closed in 1955, but its fading alumni fight to pass on a legacy

Storer College graduated West Virginia’s first black attorney, J.R. Clifford; Ella Nora Phillips Stewart, one of the nation’s first female African American pharmacists; and jazzman Don “The Little Giant” Redman. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first elected president, spent two years there.


HARPERS FERRY, West Virginia -- William Vollin remembers first climbing the hill to Storer College in 1947.

He was 16, a black kid on scholarship who arrived at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., with a change of clothing in a paper sack.

“I was just a nice little boy, not sophisticated,” says Vollin, 84, who sports a silver mustache, stylish spectacles and a wry smile.

“No way in the world would I stay there,” he thought back then of the bare-bones place that left him cold and homesick. He wanted to hop a train home to Arlington, Va., where he lived in public housing with his family.

But he stayed, and gradually campus life took hold. Vollin played football at Storer, met Anna Mildred Roy — they have been married 62 years — and fortified his belief that he was equal to any person, black or white.

Which is why on an August afternoon, Vollin, a retired educator who lives in Southeast Washington, is back in Harpers Ferry for the annual Storer reunion. And why his son, David Vollin, 53, is by his side. Growing up, David’s sisters, Sharon and Angela Vollin, were also regulars.

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